East of England: Which way out?

“We have felt for many years that we’ve been short-changed on infrastructure,” says Derrick Ashley, a member of the East of England regional assembly’s planning panel and executive member for the environment at Hertfordshire council. “Even if you don’t count hospitals and schools, plans for real improvement have been put so far forward that they are out of sight.”

Ashley is outlining the main reason why he, and many others in the East of England, are concerned about plans for massive housing growth there.

As home to three of the government’s four housing growth areas, the East is expecting a big increase in housing numbers and the regional assembly has approved plans to build 478,000 homes between 2001 and 2021. The government is even pushing for a further 18,000 homes on top of that, although this has been rejected by the regional assembly.

The blueprint for where the East’s new homes should go, up to 2021, is the regional spatial strategy, approved by the regional assembly on 15 October and out for public consultation since 8 December. Its proposal for 478,000 new homes has already raised hackles, and not just among Nimbys: many local politicians foresee commuter traffic jams from new dormitory towns trailing to the horizon because of a lack of investment in roads and public transport.

Ashley says: “Our mainline railway and the Lee Valley to Stansted railway line are at capacity or beyond, and we don’t see anything from government showing they are committed to getting the transport right. We have been asking for improvements to the A1(M) for 20 years and we’re still waiting.”

Meanwhile, consultants who did a sustainability assessment of the spatial strategy found there were not enough extra ground-water supplies to meet the needs of the extra homes.

Jobs are also an issue. The strategy tries to link housing growth to additional jobs, in part to reduce the need to commute. But, as Ashley points out, this is “ambitious”: at the moment, Cambridge has plenty of jobs but not enough homes while in places such as Stevenage and Harlow, the jobs/homes balance is the other way around.

The regional development agency, however, insists the level of jobs growth seen in the strategy is achievable. “The jobs growth figure is 421,000 (from 2001 to 2021), which is 20% lower than the jobs growth realised in the previous 20 years,” says Steve Cox, director general of development at the East of England Regional Development Agency. Extra jobs have been targeted at regeneration areas and in some areas the jobs growth target is at its highest ever.

Cox is also adamant that jobs growth is in line with an increase in houses. “We had some work done with the assembly on how job and house growth is aligned. A perfect balance is never easy, but the consultants thought the new strategy proposed a better balance between the two,” he says.

Another fear is that in the rush for units, particularly in the growth areas, facilities that improve quality of life will be forgotten. “People talk about sustainable communities but that usually refers to physical infrastructure rather than what it’s like to live there,” says Nigel Howlett, chief executive of registered social landlord Cambridge Housing Society. “For instance, Cambourne, [a new settlement outside Cambridge], isn’t a fully inclusive community because there’s no supported housing – partly because if you need daytime activity, you have to go elsewhere and there isn’t the transport.”

More new settlements are on the cards as part of the M11 growth corridor and Howlett is keen that “social infrastructure” should not be forgotten. He proposes that a new village at Northstowe, for example, should have a community land trust, which holds assets and provides community services.

In general, however, housing associations are among the biggest fans of the development proposals: they hope the growth would start to plug the region’s shortfall of 7200 social homes.

Claire Astbury, regional officer at the National Housing Federation, says many of the sites needed are already in the planning system so very few more will need to be identified, and that 60,000 of the homes in the strategy have already been built.

Funding could prove to be a hurdle for the remaining developments, though: “There’s a big question over whether the level of investment is sufficient to deliver the quantity in the strategy,” she says.

To smooth the path to delivering the homes, the Housing Corporation is looking at what can be built in the region in the shorter term.

The corporation has a database – or “supply pipeline” – listing all the sites available for housing in the region, from those not yet being planned to those with detailed permission and almost ready to go. The idea behind it is that the corporation knows where to direct funds before making final decisions, bidders get a feel for whether they will get the money and, should a site fall through, another one be will be waiting to pick up the funds, thus saving time.

The pipeline has already identified sites going for planning permission that will provide about 9000 of the 478,000 homes; a further 4000 homes are still to be planned and there are 7000 more speculative units. But the pipeline is designed to be a thumbnail sketch. The corporation plans to do the exercise three times to get a more accurate picture.

The region’s three growth areas all tell very different stories. The Milton Keynes South Midlands area, whose Bedford sites are in the eastern region, is looking good and sites are progressing: 278 units in Bedfordshire have detailed planning permission. This may be because many of the sites in the growth area are greenfield, and therefore relatively easy to develop. Many are also owned by government regeneration agency English Partnerships, which is very much signed up to growth in the Milton Keynes area.

The M11 corridor is also doing well with sites coming forward. The Cambridge area has 900 units with detailed planning permission. The London commuter belt area has 1100 and Peterborough has 269. Together they represent 57% of schemes with detailed consent in the region.

In the Thames Gateway, things are different. There are 105 units with detailed planning permission – which is 4% of sites with detailed consent in the eastern region. With lots of privately owned brownfield sites, it is perhaps unsurprising that few sites are ready for building in Gateway.

Naisha Polaine, assistant director of investment for the East of England at the Housing Corporation, explains: “People say there are infrastructure issues in the Gateway to be solved before housing can move forward. This seems to reflect that.” She says the team writing the new regional housing strategy could use the data to decide whether housing sites are progressing in the right areas and what changes need to be made.

The pipeline scheme is very popular among housing associations who feel it gives them a better idea of whether they will get funds and be able to speed up or at least smooth the delivery process. They also think it could be a lever to persuade government to put more money into infrastructure in the region.

Claire Astbury says: “If you have sites that are right in the pipeline being held back by the infrastructure, you can go to government and say ‘there are strategic sites that we cannot deliver because of infrastructure’.”

Councils, though, have tended to be more qualified in their praise of the pipeline. They see it as a sign that the government is more concerned about value for money and housebuilding on a grand scale, than the quality of the development. In particular, councils whose needs are more about regeneration than new housing are worried that they will lose out. Brendan Bergin, corporate director of social policy at Great Yarmouth council, says: “I’m concerned that it’s all geared to production of housing at the minimum possible cost.”

Great Yarmouth is trying to convert existing buildings to housing and aims to meet the government target of 60% of development on brownfield land. “It’s not the cheapest approach, but it’s the best one for areas like ours,” says Bergin. He fears conversions and brownfield developments will lose out on funding because they are more expensive than new-build and greenfield. “There is a conflict in government, which wants cheap housing and more brownfield,” he says.

Whatever happens, the East is set for massive growth and, with the spatial strategy out for consultation, expect fiery exchanges. The issues involved closely reflect those faced by the whole of the South of England, so many people will be keeping a close watch on the outcome of this complex debate.